The Handmaids of Aphrodite
by roisaber
Summary: When a less-than-reputable business "licenses" Abstergo's VR technology, the possibilites for a certain industry of early adopters become endless... An impoverished student at the University of Toronto gets roped into a world she never could have imagined, taken right from her own genes.


I dreamed; I dreamed of minarets and assassins.

When my alarm roused me from my slumber, my heart was already pounding in my chest. I guess my heart remembered what day it was before my brain did. I turned off my alarm and took a quick, hot shower. I could tell by the shaking of my limbs that I wouldn't need coffee to stay awake today. My roommate was eating a leisurely breakfast in our small kitchen, and she looked up when I entered in only my towel. I busied myself in the fridge, grabbing some yogurt and granola.

"Mornin', Kara. Still going to your thing today?"

"Yeah." My voice cracked as I answered. "I'm a little nervous."

I tried, and failed, to suppress an anxious giggle.

Sarah replied comfortingly, "It's not like there's anything to be ashamed of. Everybody looks at porn, right? Girls do it, guys do it _constantly_, even old men and preachers so it."

I put my hands on my hips.

"You are _not_ helping."

"Oops, sorry. Oh shit, it's already past nine! Well, I have to get going to class. Break a leg!"

And with that, Sarah grabbed her bookbag and scurried off. Well, that was us; Sarah and Kara of Isabella St. We're both students at the University of Toronto, and we'd been friends since meeting our first year during orientation. Now we're both juniors and we live in off-campus housing. That's the source of my problem, actually. I'm almost broke and my parents have no intention of funding my life of "sin and debauchery" in the BigCity.

So, that's how I ended up researching the Toronto porn scene on Craigslist a couple weeks ago. I'm really nervous but I'm no prude about sex, and when I discovered an organization that somehow combined pornography with historical realism, I figured that I'd found the perfect match. I emailed them and they got back to me almost immediately. After a quick video conference call, mostly for them to establish that I was who I claimed to be, I was given a job as a … well, as a porn star. After an uncomfortable physical where I got swabbed, prodded, and poked throughout my unmentionables, I was in.

And today was my first day.

I quickly ate and agonized over which outfit to wear. Slutty? Provocative yet professional? Austere? What exactly _were_ you supposed to wear to your first day on the set? I finally settled on a gothy black dress that was fashionable enough for a club, but composed enough to wear to class. It was a warm autumn day so I didn't bother with leggings or a cap. I checked myself out in the mirror. Cropped blonde hair? Check. I'd worn it as a pixie cut for awhile, but I didn't have money to go to the salon, so it had grown out a little shaggy. It was still attractive, if I do say so myself. Blue eyes? Check. I'd always been "daddy's blue eyed angel" until I'd gone to the City and assimilated the sinful lifestyle of the heathens. I didn't have the unctuous boobs typically associated with porn stars, but my medium breasts were pert enough to make a valiant effort at cleavage. I ran a brush through my hair twice and accomplished nothing. Satisfied, I grabbed the subway to the offices of Bunnysilk Entertainment.

When I got off the subway, it was exactly what the maps had led me to expect. The agency's offices were in the decidedly unfashionable – that is, run down – outskirts of Toronto. I hurried down the street clutching my purse. I ignored the stares of construction workers and the chronically unemployed until I found myself standing in front of a decrepit four story building. I hit the buzzer and was answered by a bored female voice.

"Yes?"

"Um." This was my last chance to back out. "I have an appointment with Bunnysilk Entertainment?"

There was a clatter of typing.

"Kara?"

I nodded, even though she couldn't see me. "Yeah that's right."

"Please come to the third floor."

And with a loud buzz, I was in.

The two lower floors were a collection of downscale businesses. Their signs shilled bail bonds, divorces, bankruptcies, and cash settlement services on the cheap. No doubt the finance charges were twice what you'd pay if you actually had the money up front to go someplace more reputable. The upper two floors were owned by Bunnysilk Entertainment, and I waited impatiently for the elevator. Might as well get this over with.

When it finally arrived, the elevator looked like something from a dystopian sci fi movie. The doors opened with a rattling screech and revealed an interior that didn't exactly fill me with confidence. The 70s era gold shag carpeting smelled like something truly unique, and the single incandescent light hanging from its own wire seemed in constant danger of burning out for good. The walls were stained with water - and God only knows what else. With no small amount of trepidation, I stepped into the contraption. If I were ever going to write a fanfic involving a rape, this elevator would be the setting. I shivered at the thought.

The elevator opened up to offices that might have been considered a triumph of minimalist design, if only it'd been done by a well-known decorator instead of existing as a congealed, low-budget accident. The concrete floor was tiled with a half-finished mosaic that looked like it'd languished, incomplete, for a decade. A bored woman my age wearing a bunny ear headband alternated between filing her nails and texting on her smartphone. All the furniture I could see was mismatched, and much of it looked like it'd been dragged in from the employees' own homes – or a scrap heap.

In contrast to that were the computers. Every single one of them was a top-of-the-line, current year model, from a major – and expensive – electronics manufacturer. Ethernet cables and coolant lines were threaded everywhere. It looked like a million snakes had gotten loose on the third floor of Bunnysilk Entertainment. I'm a bit of a computer nerd on the side, and I use the cumbersome memory hog LaTeX on a daily basis to format my papers, so I found myself almost drooling at the millions of dollars in high tech gadgetry on display. Before I could figure out why a porn studio needed _that_ many flops, a middle aged man in a sharp Armani met me at the elevator.

"Kara, my name's Ethan." His smiled seemed genuine. "It's good to meet you."

I tentatively shook his outstretched hand. "Um, enchanté?"

Ethan laughed. "You're not from the City, are you? I can tell by your accent."

"I wasn't exactly raised Francophile," I allowed.

"Well, don't worry; everyone here speaks English anyway. Welcome to Bunnysilk Entertainment. Would you please follow me to my office?"

I nodded, subconsciously clutching my purse for comfort.

His corner office was literally just a set of ceiling high drywall bolted to the floor. Inside, a wide variety of degrees hung on the wall, mostly in compsci I noted. There were dozens of pictures as well, and to my surprise, they depicted Ethan with various B-list celebrities and international dignitaries. I was impressed in spite of myself. There was a nice mahogany desk, three chairs that looked genuinely comfortable, and a woman in a smart business suit sitting languidly and waiting. Ethan directed me to a seat, and then I was in.

"Kara, I'd like you to meet my business partner, Adèle. I'm just the face; she's the Project Director, the one who actually makes things happen."

I nodded. "Hi."

"So, can I ask you what brought you to Bunnysilk Entertainment today?"

"Well," there was no point in lying. "I'm not exactly flush with cash. I expected that it'd be easier to find work in the City. I've almost blown through all my savings and the semester at University of Toronto has just started. I won't be able to complete my studies if I don't find a way to earn some money, fast."

"Well, I think we'll be able to help you out," Ethan answered. "What are you studying?"

This one always caught people off guard.

"Koine Greek. Presocratic philosophy. Early Christian literature."

Ethan blinked. "That's quite a résumé. And you want to be in porn?"

I sighed. People always acted like I was some kind of alien when I admitted what I was studying.

"Yeah, it's kind of a personal interest of mine. It's like this," I explained. "I grew up in a super Protestant household, and I guess there's a little of background I can't quite shake. But the more I learn about that time period, the more I fall in love with the New Testament, and with God. I've come to believe that he's not an old man in the sky with lightning bolts looking for a reason to get angry with us. I don't think there's any such thing as being a perfect person and in my experience, people who live their lives condemning this sin or that are always looking for the sins in others and ignoring the ones in themselves. I think God loves us for who we are, not for who we're not."

"So you're a Christian?"

I considered this for a moment.

"Not the churchgoing kind."

"No matter," interjected Adèle. "The main question is if you're willing to do the job."

I nodded. "As long as people aren't, like, mean or anything, I don't have a problem with it. What's the pay?"

Ethan quoted a figure. Now it was my turn to blink.

"That's, um, very generous," I answered nervously.

It was enough to cover my room and board, tuition, and a brand new car all at once.

Adèle said, "There _is_ a catch, in a manner of speaking. We're working with some experimental technology here and you'll have to sign non-disclosure agreements and non-competes out the yin yang. If we find out you've been blabbing about any of the work we do here, we'll sue your pants off. Other than that, I think you'll find this to be an edifying and enriching work environment."

I tried on my best smile. They were offering me a fortune.

"I can keep a secret."

"Excellent!" Ethan said. "Welcome aboard, Kara. Adèle, she's all yours."

Adèle led me to an unoccupied desk towards the rear of the building. First, she had me sign and initial about 30,000 forms, all of which amounted to roughly the same thing. _Talk, and we'll sue you, your parents, your goldfish, your dead great-grandparents…_

Adèle said, "Let me explain, this isn't exactly a _normal_ porn job. We're using technology licensed from Abstergo…"

Something about the way she said "licensed" made me think that wasn't exactly the right word for how they'd gotten the tech.

"…to create the most realistic VR simulations in the history of the medium. Do you know anything about genetic memory?"

I shrugged. "Just what's been in the news. Epigenetic inheritance and all that jazz."

"Well - and this is more of that non-disclosure stuff – it turns out that it's all that and more. In fact, the entire personal history of any of your ancestors exists within your DNA. And we have a technique to extract and record it. We sequenced your DNA that we got from your physical examination, and it turns out you're a perfect candidate for our procedure. We've found several prostitutes in your genetic history."

I blushed, but then, aren't I doing more or less the same thing?

"So where do I come in?" I asked tentatively.

"Well, we need somebody to actually go in and relive these experiences so that we can record them. So, this isn't a traditional porn job at all. You won't actually be using your own body, but instead, you'll be experiencing the memories of your great-great-great and so on grandmothers."

I breathed in. This was so much to take in all at once. Still, there was one worry I'd had on my mind ever since I started even considering this gig…

"So there's like, no chances of disease or anything like that?" I asked.

"No. The worst thing that can happen to you is what we call desynchronization, where you lose the thread of your ancestor's memory and fall out of the simulation. Then you'll wind up back here, in Bunnysilk's offices. No matter what goes wrong, the biggest worry you have to face is a mild headache."

To tell you the truth, I was starting to get genuinely excited. A job that was easy, safe, and would pay my bills for the whole semester? Could this possibly get any better?

Adèle sat me down in front of a wildly overpowered computer and tapped a few keys. The screen blossomed to life, and soon I was looking at 3D models of a few different women.

"These are lifetimes we've extracted from your DNA," Adèle explained. "You can choose any of them you want. This one lived in Victorian England… she's from Calais… one from ancient Greece-"

"Her!" I said before even thinking.

"Mmhm. She was a priestess of Aphrodite. I'm sure you can imagine what kind of jobs she generally did…"

Sure, that went without saying. In the ancient world, a priestess, a banker, a landlord, a philosopher, and a hetaira were often one and the same person.

The woman's birth name was Ziais, and apparently Adèle had put some research monkey to work because there was a wealth of information about her available in the system. Born in Dacia in AD 88, both of her parents had been killed in Roman incursions and she'd been taken in and raised by temple prostitutes in Corinth. They'd renamed her Aspasia. She eventually died of illness in Corinth at age 62, wealthy and respected. Aspasia worked as a prostitute in service of the goddess Aphrodite, and at that time, the priestesses were fabulously wealthy and respected. Ship captains would detour to Corinth with their crews just to visit the temple on their way out to the shipping lanes, and the city was a hub of shipping, trade, and pleasure.

Aspasia was Dacian, and it was evident at first glance that she was from barbarian lands. Even though she spoke flawless Koine, her blonde hair, green eyes, and fair skin gave her away. In fact, she looked a little like me, so much so that the resemblance was almost uncanny. Incredible that genes could have such staying power over the millennia. Well, I guess that's how it's possible for this cottage industry to exist at all.

"You like her?" Adèle asked.

I nodded.

"Just put on that headset, hit 'start simulation,' and away you go. I'll leave you to it."

I stopped her. "Um, hey, I have a couple questions."

"Shoot."

"Who actually buys this stuff? It's not like I see it advertised on, you know, _those_ sites."

Adèle shrugged. "At the moment, it's still in the prototyping stage. I can tell you that we have some venture capitalists putting up funding for our operations, and in return we give them access to the cream of our discoveries. You know how it is."

"And, um…" I paused. "Is it guys or girls who actually want this? I mean it's a little weird to _want_ to be a prostitute, don't you think?"

Adèle laughed, but not unkindly.

"I'm a little older than I look, Kara, and when you get to be my age you'll realize that deep down, everyone's just burning with desperate curiosity about sex. You've got an internet connection; you know what I mean. To answer your question a little more directly, I think more men than women would be interested in this content, but in the end everybody's itching for a little scratch of the forbidden."

That was a little surprising to me, but I nodded as if I really understood. "Thanks, Adèle. I'll get to work."

"Don't overdo it," she advised. "You're a valuable asset to the team and we want you performing at your best."

With that, I dove in.

For a minute, I felt a very strong sensation; an intense vertigo. I felt sick but I had no body with which to throw up. I couldn't see anything, but if I had had sight, somehow I knew that what I'd be seeing is a grey tunnel flecked with red lightning. I was spinning but I had no center. And then, as if a curtain of haze were being lifted over my eyes, I found myself in a plush Hellenistic temple. It was full of air and sunlight. There were scarlet cushions scattered everywhere, and beautiful women in varying stages of undress lounging and chatting. I blinked, and my eyelids blinked with me. I raised my hand and was awestruck by the sensation of my own body.

"Did you have a nice nap?" asked a smiling voice next to me, in Koine.

The pronunciation was strange, but two years of minoring in ancient Greek served me well.

"Yes, it was pleasant."

"Ooh, so formal!" the woman, who I somehow knew to be Minthe, giggled.

"Too much drink last night," I hazarded.

This made Minthe laugh all the more.

"Sorry for waking you up, but I know that philosophy is your favorite subject. Sister Tryphosa is going on about Zeno's paradoxes again."

I rolled my eyes. That was the Greeks for you. I heard a woman's voice, strong, clear, and authoritative ringing through the columned hall.

"Because you can only ever close half the distance," Tryphosa explained, "motion is impossible."

"But why then do things _seem_ to move?" asked one of the other priestesses.

"It's simply an illusion of perspective."

There was a general murmur of assent; given the intellectual gestalt of ancient Greece, this would have struck them as eminently reasonable. I decided it was time to put my classical education to use.

I said, "Oh, but Sister Tryphosa! Have you not heard of Minos' hound?"

She shrugged. "No, Sister Aspasia. Please go on."

"Once the hero Cephalus had a hound; a gift from Zeus which could not help but always catch its prey. One day, Cephalus got the idea in his head to hunt the Teumessian fox, a child of the gods who was destined to always escape his pursuer."

"Exactly!" Tryphosa gloated as if she'd scored a point.

"The fox chased the hound around and around again; an irresolvable contradiction."

"See?" said one.

Tryphosa narrowed her eyes. I didn't often agree with her, and she sensed a trap. "That's just what I'm trying to prove."

"Ah, but you don't know the ending. Zeus got such a headache from trying to sort the whole thing out that he turned both of them to stone and threw them into the sky."

With that, the philosophizing girls all broke into a tinkle of laughter. Even Tryphosa looked amused. Sister Ptolema, for her part, let out a sudden belch. She was a daughter of Dionysus through and through, and she was already tipsy at ten thirty.

I was astonished by how easy it had been to meld my identity with Aspasia's. How did I know all this?

A bell rang at the entrance to the airy temple; our first customer of the morning. I guess all the men of Corinth were still asleep, nursing hangovers earned from the festivities the night before. The man dropped a few coins in our basket and sauntered into the hall. Nobody counted. As handmaids of Aphrodite, we were there to serve the goddess even moreso than the men who came. As long as they made a donation, whether large or small, they were entitled to enjoy the bodies of Aphrodite's devoted servants. Most men gave generously to stay in the goddess' good graces; after all, nobody wanted a bout with the clap or to be punished with permanent erectile dysfunction as a result of irritating the deity of pleasure. The man – a sailor from the look of him – took another girl by the hand and the two of them passed smiling into the outside courtyard.

Tryphosa moved on to Zeno's final paradox.

"Time can be divided just like space," she said. "Do we all agree that time is a composition of instants, as space is a composition of individual places?"

There was a general murmur of assent, and I listened carefully. With experiences like these, not only was I going to make good income at Bunnysilk, but I was going to effortlessly ace my thesis.

"Consider the instant of time in which an arrow is in flight. It cannot be moving to where it is; after all, it's already _in_ the place it's in in that instant."

Ugh, this Koine grammar was killing me. I wished I had a scratch pad or something.

"But it also can't be moving to the place where it isn't."

"How come?" asked Sister Ptolema, a bit unsteadily.

"Because in that instant it also can't be where it's not!" Tryphosa sounded triumphant. "Therefore, motion is impossible. Zeno proved it three times over and I am but his humble confessor."

There was some mild applause, and the sound of passionate grunts drifting in from the courtyard. I decided to play with them a little by introducing ideas they couldn't possibly have the background to understand.

"Let me disprove that by indirect analogy," I announced.

There was a little sand pit for drawing, and the girls crowded around me while I prepared my argument.

"How does Euclid describe parallel lines?" I asked pedagogically.

Math wasn't Tryphosa's forte, but another sister quickly answered.

"Parallel lines are lines that never cross. When a line segment crossing each line forms an angle on the interior on the same side of each, and each angle is ninety degrees, the lines are parallel," she answered with satisfaction.

"Right." I drew two roughly parallel lines in the sand. "But that presupposes that space itself is a flat and continuous plane. What if space were _curved_?"

The girls murmured in scandalized astonishment.

"_Curved_ space?"

"But Euclid is the summation of all possible geometric knowledge…"

I heard an intense ringing in my ears, and I felt something in my head start to pound. I perceived that what I was doing was bringing me up against the edges of the simulation and I was in danger of desychronization from changing history. Obviously, it wasn't time for the Corinthians to hear about curved space just yet.

I laughed, a little too quickly, and said, "I apologize. I was just being absurd for the sake of a joke."

Fortunately, I was saved; the ringing subsided and the girls got back to discussing Zeno. Within a couple minutes, the bell at the front of Aphrodite's temple rang loudly, and from the raucous shouts it was obvious that a military trireme had just pulled into port. The girls coiffed, perfumed themselves with rose water, and swigged spiced alcohol for their breath. There were enough sailors that we'd all be called upon to offer our bodies in service of Aphrodite.

"What's your name?" asked a visibly drunk, sunburned young man, who might be cute except for his missing tooth and lash scars.

I smiled, even though my heart thundered in my chest.

"I'm Aspasia. Welcome, in the name of Aphrodite."

"You're gorgeous," he slurred.

He sat down on my cushion and put his arm around me, and with some effort I didn't draw away. It was hard for me to understand why I was feeling so shy. It wasn't like I'd never gone home with a man I'd just met before. I suppose it was a little weird to be doing it for money, but after all, it wasn't like it was even my real body, right? Still, I could feel everything as though it were me – Kara – in the room. I could smell the alcohol on the sailor's breath, and the salty musk of his sweat, mixed with Aspasia's rosewater perfume and the scents of the other girls, many of whom had already been pushed down into their pillows by lusty sailors. I could hear the sounds of Corinth's busy streets echoing into the open temple and echoing throughout the hall. The other girls were moaning and giving the sailors a show they'd been waiting for a long time at sea. The young man next to me looked a little worried.

"Are you okay, Aspasia?" he suddenly asked.

The gesture was so sweet that the nervous ice in my heart melted. He was a paying customer, and by all rights there was no reason for him to give a damn about my welfare. But the concern in his voice had been genuine, and I sensed that under his rough and ready exterior, he had the heart of a poet. I let myself lean back coquettishly.

"Maybe you could convince me," I whispered.

And then he was on me, kissing my mouth, my ears, my neck. My body flushed with unexpected exhilaration, and he watched me closely and modulated his touch to get the most out of my willing body. Somehow, my robes fell away, exposing the soft, creamy northern flesh underneath. He toyed with my nipples with his teeth, and I was shocked to discover that he was one of the most attentive men I'd ever been with. After that, it was all a whirlwind of skin against skin, of flesh against flesh, of hands caressing hair. And to think, I didn't even have to wear a condom! Aspasia's file showed that by some miracle, she wouldn't have children until she was thirty, and avoided the most virulent forms of crotch rot throughout her life.

When he finished, we laid arm and arm for a minute. But the captain was already calling his men to order. Apparently, they'd stopped in Corinth on their way on to Athens just to visit us. When we checked the donation box, it was clear they must have left half their salary from the voyage with our already fabulously rich temple.

The rest of the day went on like that. We chattered about philosophy in between being selected by men for a roll in the hay, and I lost count of how many men chose me that afternoon. I only reached orgasm a couple of times – and still the young sailor from the beginning of the day was the best – but it wasn't an unpleasant sensation. In fact, for someone who spent so much time sitting in class or in front of a computer, the physical exertion was downright exhilarating. Before I knew it, I found myself back in the offices of Bunnysilk with a thin strand of drool dripping out of my mouth and down on my dress. I was embarrassed.

"Don't worry about it," Adèle said. "How was it?"

I considered before answering. "Good. Surprisingly… good."

"That's excellent to hear. You're our most promising candidate yet. I looked in on some of the data, and let me tell you; that was good stuff. Our clients will go gaga for it."

I was still a little disoriented. I kept expecting the smell of rosewater and semen, but now, that was just a memory.  
"Why don't you take the rest of the day off and integrate the experience?" Adèle advised.

When I got home, Sarah, that dear girl, had a box of chocolates and a bottle of red wine waiting for me.

"How was it?"

I gratefully popped a chocolate into my mouth.

"Um, pretty good, actually. It's a little hard to explain and they've got me hip deep in NDAs. Not exactly what I expected."

"You don't look all sexed," Sarah observed.

"It's… well, hard to explain. It's more of a VR type thing."

Sarah grinned coyly. "When do I get to see the finished product?"

Well, it's not like we'd never _done_ anything.

"I'm not sure," I admitted. "It's a future tech hush hush type operation. But you know, if you're looking for some extra spending money, maybe I could put in a good word for you…"


End file.
